Filed under: Web services, web 2.0, Web
Philtro: do we really need a spam filter for Twitter?
There are a lot of virtually-identical web clients for Twitter out there, but Philtro is a new one with a unique approach. It uses a system that you're probably familiar with from email spam filters to weed out the irrelevant stuff and show you the posts from your Twitter stream that are most interesting to you. There's a thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating system that trains the filter and lets you correct any mistakes it makes. It's definitely an original approach, but there's already a way of weeding out spam on Twitter: just follow the people who are relevant to you. If they're not, then don't follow them. If it gets to the point where you're following so many people that the small percentage of irrelevant posts from otherwise-relevant people adds up to more than you can handle, consider dropping some people. On the other hand, if you're a business user of Twitter, or a "social media marketing guru" of some kind, Philtro could prove indispensible. Philtro does have an audience, though: according to their blog, their average user only cares about 5% of the tweets they read.
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The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
michel said 1:58PM on 5-13-2009
Twitter _is_ spam.
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Paul Singh said 3:58PM on 5-13-2009
I totally agree that unfollowing a "noisy" person is the easiest way to clean up your inbound tweets. But, what happens when/if that person actually says something that you would have found interesting?
Disclaimer: I'm Philtro's founder. :)
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Jay Hathaway said 4:51PM on 5-13-2009
Hey Paul, you raise a good point. That's why I'm glad there are almost as many different web clients out there as there are ways that people use Twitter. I know Philtro is going to be exactly what some people were looking for.
Jared Goralnick said 5:15PM on 5-13-2009
I think there are a number of reasons to follow someone on Twitter, and relevancy of their content is only one part of that. Any tools that address relevancy amongst the constant noise and chatter have a huge chance for success in the business world. That's why I've been testing Philtro for a while; I'm happy with it, and excited to see where things go.
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